‘Church plans to expand to Laconia, Manchester’

Grace Capital Church in Pembroke will soon open a new campus in Laconia, with plans to expand further to Manchester next year. The Rev. Peter Bonanno said the church is finishing renovations on a more than 20,000-square-foot building on Main Street in Laconia which should open for services early next month.

The church, which was founded by a small group 16 years ago and has grown to more than 1,500 parishioners, has held services in a Laconia school for about a year. Bonanno said while the church intended to only draw from around Concord, it has seen a large influx of attendees from the Lakes Region and Manchester area.

For that reason, the church hopes to expand and have 10 campuses by 2020, he said.

‘’It’s still one church but it’s multiple locations,’’ Bonanno said. ‘’So we have a common staff. We have our method. The DNA of who we are as a church remains intact. We prepare our sermons together as a team.’’

The Laconia campus, located at 533 Main St., will hold services but also meetings for youth and women’s groups.

‘’We’re thinking even bigger than that. We’re thinking how do we leverage the facility we have not only to reach the community but it could be a small business that we look at developing at some point,’’ he said.

For the Manchester expansion, Bonanno said the church plans to gather a group of interested people by the end of this year. Early next year, the group would start meeting once a month, with services being held weekly by Easter. Bonanno said a meeting place has not been finalized but he is looking at a downtown location.

‘’We’ve seen an influx of people who have a great spiritual hunger. And for us the hallmark of what we do is not only our style, being modern and relevant to where people are, but also our messages,’’ he said. ‘’It’s biblical messages but with practical application.’’

(Tricia Nadolny can be reached at 369-3320 or tnadolny@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @Tricia_Nadolny.)’